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CSC to set up Wollongong cybersecurity centre

Attracts $2.76m co-investment.

CSC Australia will set up a cybersecurity monitoring centre in the Illawarra region of NSW after snaring a $2.76m co-investment from a public-private fund.

The services firm said in a statement that the security operations facility would "monitor and respond to local, regional and global network threats and cyber attacks".

Stephen Kowal, general manager of financial services and state government at CSC told iTnews that the cybersecurity facility is likely to form part of the company's follow-the-sun operations on a global basis.

"We're doing a lot of investment and expansion in our security business [worldwide] and this is part of that," Kowal said.

Kowal noted that CSC had existing cybersecurity monitoring resources based in Australia, but said that the Wollongong operations centre would be an expansion of this presence.

"We do have smaller operations centres in Australia that do monitoring, [but this new facility is] all about expanding services, not consolidation of [existing] services," he said.

Cloud centre

CSC also plans to use some of the co-investment funds to establish a cloud centre of excellence in the region.

It was unclear exactly how the cloud facility would function. Kowal noted that it would depend on client requirements.

Both facilities would sit in CSC's Technology Park campus in Wollongong and create 98 jobs.

The co-investment funds would be used to fit out the facilities, buy equipment and employ people.

CSC hoped to tap into Wollongong University as a source of high-tech skills.

Kowal noted that although CSC has two years to spend the money, it would likely be more "aggressive" in the build-out of the facilities.

"We would anticipate [build-out] being in the front half of that [two-year] investment cycle given security and cloud are pretty strong pushes for us now," he said.

The investment was awarded out of the Illawarra Region Innovation and Investment Fund (IRIIF), a pot of money contributed by the Federal Government, NSW State Government and BlueScope Steel (pdf).

As grants are distributed on a co-investment basis, CSC is also stumping up an equal investment to set up the two facilities, meaning the total cost is a shade over $5.5 million.

CSC was one of six firms to receive a co-investment contribution under the latest round of grant funding.

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